This always makes me think of Quarantine. Doing violent missions to improve your car while listening to music seems like a pretty safe bet for a game today, so I'm not sure why it hasn't been 'reincarnated' too.

Paying millions for 'aaa' writers to create lore for them was a really bad idea. Warcraft (the only game they cared about), Half Life, Fallout, Deus Ex, System Shock, etc didn't need to do that. Those developers had good ideas and wanted to tell an interesting story in their games. 38 Studios had people who were only interested in making a WoWclone.

They were aware that Warcraft had 10 years of commercially successful "lore", so they tried to shortcut that by effectively licensing it - just like the other WoWclones did with Conan, LoTR, Star Wars. It was never going to work.

Jerykk wrote on May 26, 2012, 22:38:Really wish this took a more open-ended approach to level design ala STALKER. It feels like such a waste to have this interesting setting but not being able to explore it because the game is so linear and scripted.

Stalker never clicked with me due to too much trial and error, while Metro was too linear. A Russian Fallout was what I was hoping for. Even just letting you revisit the Metro stations and some optional areas to explore would've been nice.

I think Conan is to blame for this, and probably every other funcom problem. Instead of wasting a lot of time and money making a doomed WoWclone, a small portion of those resources could've been used to refresh Anarchy Online and add a lot of polish to Secret World. It's sad to see original ideas die on the vine because an awful WoWclone got all the fertilizer.

Creston wrote on May 23, 2012, 00:30:To be fair, most outfits just make you choose from a pre-selected 6 or 8 options, and they'll all retardedly easy questions to figure out about somebody.

There's very few places that allow you to specify both the answer as well as the question.

Creston

While you can't choose the questions, the answers don't have to be logical and should certainly never, ever, be anything found on facebook or in search engines. No hacking or social engineering will discover that Bobby Kotick was the maid of honor at your wedding.

InBlack wrote on May 23, 2012, 07:30:Management Fail is what I call it, anything other than a remake of the original was/is bound to fail. Oldschoolers will shun it for its heresy, and newschoolers are clueless as to what the fuck its supposed to be anyway.

Yes, that's why the Syndicate 'remake' was sure to fail too. It would be nice if the idiot developers would learn something from this besides "those old game franchises don't sell, we need to make more generic console shooters and wowclones".

After the failure of all the previous 'AAA' licensed WoWclones - Conan, Lotro, Warhammer, etc - it was obvious this was a really bad idea, but I'm glad that didn't stop Bioware from flushing a few hundred million dollars down the toilet to prove it.

Except for doubling the number of factions by introducing the splinter groups, this doesn't seem much different than the earlier ones. I wish some other devs would make RTS games again. The genre just died years ago when everything got sucked into the MMO vortex.

Just like Conan, LOTRO, Warhammer, and all the other awful WoWclones, this game died incredibly fast. If it wasn't Bioware I'd be tempted to feel sorry that they wasted an ungodly amount of money making this predictable disaster, but they richly deserve it.

eunichron wrote on Apr 24, 2012, 14:35:Not sure if stress testers had access to the beta forums or not, but there was a post not too long ago that said Nightmare and Hell difficulty will ramp up obscenely, and that crowd control will be essential to defeating them.

The developers didn't think Diablo 2 would become a farming simulator with players able to solo-8 hell mode continually spamming their abilities, but that's what the game turned into and probably what made it so popular. If they really do change it I doubt they'll make as many people happy, though it would be the ultimate irony if Blizzard ruined a promising game by trying to make it more like WoW.

Made it to level 5 with a monk and just stopped playing. The barely remembered Diablo magic wasn't there and many worrying signs were, but I was curious to try another class to see if it got better. Too bad I haven't been able to reconnect!

Mass Effect 1 & 2 are the only Bioware games I ever bothered to finish so I was vaguely looking forward to this, but hyping c-list actors is worrying. It makes me think of all the bad FMV games from the 90's.

Based upon their past experience, they may even decide to license a famous novel or movie as the basis for their IP.

Oh please don't license anything that anyone has ever heard of. All the games they cite as "good" - Dragon Age, Elder Scrolls, Mass Effect, Fallout, Deus Ex - are original IP. A good game doesn't need "Star Wars" or "Lord of the Rings" on the box to sell, and if it's bad that won't save it.

I think they mean another unknown Pole anyway, but it would be terrible to see them doing licensed schlock.